Insights On Things You Probably Don't Care About

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okay so i often watch these chocolate guy videos and think to myself “what is the point of making this out of chocolate? modeling chocolate is reportedly disgusting, this is not really intended for consumption, why doesn’t he just make it out of clay or something”

but watching this video i FINALLY realized.

chocolate is the only sculpture medium that you can melt and then freeze for effect without some serious equipment.

like. the process of letting the chocolate drip down over the water balloon? yeah that chocolate only needs to be, like, a little over 100F/38C. that’s a touchable temperature, that’s something that you can put your fingers in without burning them off. and then it freezes again at about room temperature! and granted you want the ambient environment a little colder than room temperature, because otherwise the heat from your hands will start to melt it, but again, being able to melt this medium with your hands is a bonus.

clay doesn’t melt. you can make it liquid-y by adding water, but that doesn’t harden up again afterwards, or when it does, it’s EXTREMELY fragile. plastic melts, but at pretty high temperatures that can be dangerous to handle, and it’s also really easy to burn and will release toxic gases when it does burn. metal melts, but that’s obviously even HOTTER and MORE dangerous. wood doesn’t melt. stone technically melts but like. good luck with that one.

chocolate melts at a reasonable, human-touchable temperature and freezes again at room temperature, which means you can make solid shapes from dripping or pouring melted chocolate and letting it harden.

the only other sculpting medium i know that does that is wax, and i think wax is generally too soft/malleable overall for the kind of large structures that this guy makes.

so i finally, FINALLY fucking get why he does this shit in chocolate oh my god.

@hexadecimal00

I mean, I’m pretty sure he does them in chocolate because he’s a pastry chef and chocolatier by training (really early training, too! Like 14 years old!)

Like all of the above about the features of chocolate and how it allows itself to be used to make this kind of detailed sculpture are true but um, pretty sure he makes sculptures out of chocolate because he’s a pastry chef and these are his media. One of the most remarkable things about his work is actually that he’s absolutely dead insistent that every one of these is made to be eaten: a lot of chocolate sculpture is (or especially was before he started throwing down this way) kinda … .second class food. It really is JUST about the sculpture. 

Guichon is adamant that it’s supposed to also taste amazing and is meant to be eaten. 

He’s not a non-food sculptor who stumbled across chocolate as the perfect material and medium; he’s a pastry chef who internalized that his awesome food could also be awesome sculpture AND still be food. He works in chocolate because that’s the point. 

For the smaller things he makes, you’ll often see him actually eating it at the end, and I think that’s a great indication that he’s actually trying to make Good Food, not just PRETTY food.

This post is doing the rounds again and every time I stumble upon re-reading “modeling chocolate is reportedly disgusting”, I’m consumed by rage. I had already commented but whatever ahfjf!1!

As a pro pastry chef who would give half a lifespan for a fraction of this fucker’s skill, let me reiterate: Chef Guichon works only with the best materials, and I have yet to see him adding glucose or corn syrup to his chocolate (which is how you make standard modeling choco). This shit is FINE ok, it’s high-percentage cocoa unless it’s white, the lacquer he airbrushes on is ALSO cocoa butter + dye, and the quality IS the reason it’s so stupidly versatile. Chocolate triglycerides crystalize and arrange themselves differently depending on melting and cooling points. If it’s flexibler than clay, it’s only because Chef Guichon’s otherworldly sense of temperature is only rivalled by his whittling technique, his intimate knowledge of how much tension and weight the material supports, and his eldritch understanding of shape. I hate him for it!

I’m damn positive he’s a delightful person! I would never ever wish him ill! He seems so adorable and chill, but oh my god! There’s a pic of his baby-faced teen self with a Kraken vs Ship work - from 2007!! I spent ages denying my loathing was 1000% CRIPPLING RADIOACTIVE GREEN ENVY!1! “Modeling chocolate”, “reportedly disgusting”? He’s the fucking Mozart of his craft, I shall never be on his level, and I won’t stand by this slander. The taste has to be out of this world, plus the sculptures DO get eaten by the end of the events they’re made for. They’re food, through and through.

So yeah, nice analysis of the properties of chocolate as a sculpting/modeling medium but seriously - OP has it all backwards. Gastronomy as a whole is an art, AND it’s not meant to last, AND flavor is a major part of the aesthetic experience (which is why fondant should be banned).

Chef Guichon changed the game. He’d never nerf his own work with subpar taste.